THE "EVERYTHING ELSE" PORTFOLIOS

Even though my photographic emphasis might be Alaska and Africa (and now Iceland),
every photographer carries his or her camera while traveling and collects a wide variety of images that don't quite fit into his or her "niche". Here are some of mine...

Strange how one can live in Alaska for 38+ years and not visit some of the state's major attractions... But in my defense, my job was summer-focused, so it wasn't always
easy to visit some far off places. And Kennecott, at the end of the 60 mile long McCarthy Road, really wasn't a major attraction for most tourists until recent road
upgrades--except if you
are a photographer. The five Kennecott Mines, between 1911 and 1929, produced 4.6 million tons of rich copper ore before being abandoned in 1930 and left to deteriorate.
The whole Kennecott complex is quite large, with the actual mines being miles above the processing plant, so all the photographs you see are actually the processing plant where
trams deposited the ore. I encourage you to research the whole topic, since the history of this huge endeavor is quite interesting. The site is now a National Historic Landmark, and the National Park Service is slowly preserving and rehabilitating the buildings.

When my planned tour of the Western National Parks this fall was thwarted by the government shutdown and an early major snowstorm in the Rockies, I ended up
photographing the fall colors in Upper Michigan. Maybe the "UP" is not as well known as places like Yellowstone, but there are still photographic gems like Porcupine Mountains
Wilderness State Park, where I just happened to catch the fall colors. And the Copper Country (the Keweenaw Peninsula) produced many good opportunities too.

Every photographer has hundreds of single (or several related) random images that deserve to be viewed, but don't fit in with the other portfolios. For example, images from an abandoned rural Wisconsin schoolhouse like this don't quite fit in with my Alaska and Africa material, nor deserve their own portfolio. The hardest part will be finding them in my hard drives!

Naturally there is more to the story when visiting exotic locations than just the photographs. Here are some trip reports, with more details of the actual trip itself, that I wrote for the SafariTalk.net forum as well as friends and family.